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Topic: What IS the real problem, then? (Read 3050 times)

Well, Danno, we did start regulating large sales of fertilizer to nonfarmers. And, Danno, nobody here on this thread has yet suggested banning anything, so I wonder where on earth your argument is coming from.

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The pedigree of honey Does not concern the bee; A clover, any time, to him Is aristocracy. ---Emily Dickinson

Well, Danno, we did start regulating large sales of fertilizer to nonfarmers. And, Danno, nobody here on this thread has yet suggested banning anything, so I wonder where on earth your argument is coming from.

I wasn't pointing a finger at you so please dont take it that way. This was just another twist that I saw in the news this weekend. My family lost some friends in the OK city federal building bombing

Humans are animals, in the category of mammals. They are born with different abilities, both mental and physical. Why will one dog be friendly, and one mean, of the same breed? It is the difference in mental ability, mental reaction, and physical environment. If the mean dog is allowed the same freedoms as the friendly dog, someone will get hurt.

If people who have shown to be unstable are allowed to roam free, people will be hurt.

There is no cure, but the only effective treatment is to remove known unstable and mean thinking people. The problem there, is deciding to what extent of mean and unstable. Since there is no answer to that, the problem will never be fully eliminated.

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"Listen to the mustn'ts, child. Listen to the don'ts. Listen to the shouldn'ts, the impossibles, the won'ts. Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me . . . Anything can happen, child. Anything can be"

Humans are animals, in the category of mammals. They are born with different abilities, both mental and physical. Why will one dog be friendly, and one mean, of the same breed? It is the difference in mental ability, mental reaction, and physical environment. If the mean dog is allowed the same freedoms as the friendly dog, someone will get hurt.

If people who have shown to be unstable are allowed to roam free, people will be hurt.

There is no cure, but the only effective treatment is to remove known unstable and mean thinking people. The problem there, is deciding to what extent of mean and unstable. Since there is no answer to that, the problem will never be fully eliminated.

We will always have these unstable/evil people amongst us. They will always kill. How they will kill is the only thing uncertain

I feel like the earth is shifting beneath my feet, as I'm agreeing with iddee yet again :D

"There is no cure, but the only effective treatment is to remove known unstable and mean thinking people. The problem there, is deciding to what extent of mean and unstable. Since there is no answer to that, the problem will never be fully eliminated."

Unless, of course, you and I don't have the same meaning for "remove."

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The pedigree of honey Does not concern the bee; A clover, any time, to him Is aristocracy. ---Emily Dickinson

but that would be so difficult to screen or know which one will be the one. Last Thursday had you asked the mom of the killer if her son could do this I would hazard to guess she would have answered of course not. So how would we screen these people?Do we round up all the goth kids, or the nerds, or the jocks, or the kids with trench coats. How do we screen for this to prevent a tragedy? I just don't believe we can

.....The greatest changes occur in their country without their cooperation. They are not even aware of precisely what has taken place. They suspect it; they have heard of the event by chance. More than that, they are unconcerned with the fortunes of their village, the safety of their streets, the fate of their church and its vestry. They think that such things have nothing to do with them, that they belong to a powerful stranger called “the government.” They enjoy these goods as tenants, without a sense of ownership, and never give a thought to how they might be improved.....

In a thread on another forum, there are mothers describing psychotic behavior of children they have raised (bio or adopted) and being told they are bad parents, the kids just need a spanking, nothing can be done until they commit a crime....

I feel for them. I'm sure there's plenty of inadequate parenting out there, and I'm also sure there are truly mentally disturbed children whose parents desperately need help and can't get it.

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The pedigree of honey Does not concern the bee; A clover, any time, to him Is aristocracy. ---Emily Dickinson

we should also look at the demographics of the shooters. almost all are white middle age males. what's going on in that age/gender/race/income that might lead to this kind of stuff more than in other groups.

i also think we should let the boys (and girls) go back to knocking the snot out of each other on the playground. we shouldn't underestimate the power of the group to fix those of their own who are out of order. + feeling pain and tasting blood wakes you up to reality.

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.....The greatest changes occur in their country without their cooperation. They are not even aware of precisely what has taken place. They suspect it; they have heard of the event by chance. More than that, they are unconcerned with the fortunes of their village, the safety of their streets, the fate of their church and its vestry. They think that such things have nothing to do with them, that they belong to a powerful stranger called “the government.” They enjoy these goods as tenants, without a sense of ownership, and never give a thought to how they might be improved.....

I don't know your age, but I'll assume you are older than 35 (My apologies if you are not). How many kids did you know growing up that had to get their morning, afternoon and evening meds? How many fellow classmates did you know that had ADD? There is a mental health epidemic in this county and I believe it is caused by over prescribing medication. It is too convenient for parents to just medicate a child instead of dealing with the issues. It is also politically incorrect to face the facts on some of these kids. Schools are afraid to address it and just cover it up or move the kids around.

A fellow scoutmaster relayed a story to me just the other week. He took his troop about 100 miles for a weekend camp out. He had one scout that was on the morning/afternoon/evening meds routine. All documented on the correct forms and dispensed accordingly. He gets woken up in the middle of the night by another scout and finds this kid sitting at the picnic table slamming his own head into it. He immediately stops him and asks what he is doing. The boy says that is what he does when he can't fall asleep :? Then the boy starts becoming confrontational with other scouts and is immediately taken aside by the leaders and 3 times during the weekend he decides he has had enough and just takes off and is found "walking home". At one point the boy tells the scoutmaster, "I wish my mom had given me the blue pill before I left, I feel so much better when I get that".

I also know of a couple of kids in my son's school that seem to be heavily medicated to the point they are almost zombies. In this state they are just "there" and can be left alone. If they miss meds or get them changed, they become very confrontational and some cases injure other kids. Would I be surprised to read in the paper one of these kids some day kills someone, not at all.

What have we done for the mentally ill by closing down insane asylums and placing them in the general population and pretending they can function as normal people? Then we wonder how things like this can happen. I know dealing with the mentally ill can be a challenge and I'm not advocating going back to the past where we thought we could "fix" them but in reality were just torturing them. I do think we can come up with more compassionate treatment other than treating them as "normal" in the general population. Until we address this issue, tragedies like this will continue. Taking away rights of others is not going to solve anything. It is like banning paint brushes and expecting there to be no more artists.

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"Opportunity is missed by most people because it comes dressed in overalls and looks like work." - Thomas Edison

Robo--I did know kids who got medicated, but not many. I'm 38. I've seen the diagnosis/medication go both ways. Some kids I'd really just like to get some exercise, a good diet, take away the screen time, get them outside and see how they do. Others seem to geniunely benefit from ADD medication, after all else has failed.

Rationalization #1: violence is part of human nature.If that were the case, the rates of violence between the United States and comparable countries would be, well, comparable. Heck, violence rates all over the world would be roughly at the same rate. There is nothing “natural” about violence. There is nothing genetic about it. It is not universal. To state that violence is universal and part of human nature fails to explain the scatterplot above.Rationalization #2: If the killers had not used guns, they would have used something else (follows a long list of potential weapons).Except, they did not, did they. These killer had access to these alternative weapons all along. So why did they pick guns? R#2 does not explain the choice of guns in the first place. The reason they picked guns was that guns are available relatively easily. They are also lethally effective (and a lot of people pointed out that the Chinese attacker went after the same number of children with a knife and none of them died). And the kind of guns these killers chose were those that would provide them with great and easy means of piling up a solid body count.Also, no one knows whether the killers would have turned to other weapons. had guns not been available. It is pure speculation.Actually, we may suspect that they would not. When other societies removed weapons, the number of homicides drops to low levels. Again, just look at the scatterplot above.To be fair though, the scatterplot below shows what percentage of homicides were committed with firearms. The correlation becomes weaker, but still holds with three outliers.

In other words. countries where firearms ownerships is lower than the US are not full of murderers using other weapons available to them.Rationalization #3: It’s because of diversity. All these other countries have much more racial and ethnic homogeneity than the United States.Note that no evidence is ever offered of that claim. But let’s accept it for the sake of argument. The majority of homicides in the US are committed within racial and ethnic groups, not across racial and ethnic lines. If diversity was the issue, we would be discussing epidemics of cross-racial / cross-ethnic violence. That is just not the case. And in the vast majority of the killings under discussion, it is usually white killers / white victims. Diversity has nothing to do with it. Illegal immigration has nothing to do with it. When was the last time such killings were committed by undocumented immigrants?As a general rule, when people invoke “diversity” as the independent variable (never operationalized as a variable, but amorphously invoked nonetheless), it is the PC way of making a racist argument (it’s because of the non-white people that other European countries don’t have) without being called racist. And it’s wrong every single time.Rationalization #4: the killers are mentally ill, therefore, no gun regulation will do anything.This one often comes even before we even know anything about the killers but all of a sudden, everyone becomes capable of psychiatric diagnosis. Again, this one does not explain the scatterplot above. One would still be left having to explain why the United States has a higher rate of mental illness. But then, one would still have not explained the link mental illness → gun violence.This rationalization also assumes that mental illness is an objective category completely disembedded from culture. As I have argued before, mental illness does not exist separate from culture. As Howard Becker showed us a long time ago, a category like “mentally ill” is one that is socially constructed through a variety of social processes having to do with specific professions and producing results such as the DSM. The DSM is not an objective categorization of symptoms and conditions. It is influenced by – and influences – our culture. Once socially produced, the designation of “mentally ill” is then applied as a label to a series of observable behavior that violate norms.If one wanted to invoke mental illness as an explanation for the shootings, one would still need to explain why the person decided to get guns and shoot others as opposed to, say, run naked in the streets, a behavior that would also get the person defined as mentally ill. And one would still have to explain why mentally ill people do not pick killing with guns as the behavior expression of their mental illness in other countries.The truth is that mentally ill people are just as influenced by the culture as the rest of us. They are just as socialized in a culture that provides scripts regarding masculinity, violence, power and, yes, guns. It is culture that makes available the idea that one’s masculine anger is to be appeased to murder suicide by gun.

And then, once these rationalizations are in place, solutions are offered:Solution #1: more gunsBased on the scatterplot above, this one should have been laughed out of town a long time ago.This idea is based on cultural narrative that have the force of myth: (1) a good guy with a gun will always shoot better than the bad guy; (2) any good guy with a gun will always overpower a bad guy with a gun; (3) a good guy with a gun will never make a mistaken identification; (4) all such situations are always unambiguous, the parties have been clearly identified, the potential victims are out of the way, all that is left is the good guy v. the bad guy, Death Wish-/Dirty Harry-style.

Solution #2: more GodI know this one sounds stupid but it has been trotted out, so, keeping in mind the scatterplot above, consider this:

As you can see, the US has higher rates of religiosity compared to its level of wealth, making its levels of religiosity compared to that of South America rather than the economically-more-comparable Europe. There is already more God in the US than in other part of the developed world.And if you look at religiosity within the US, you will find all sorts of behavior (like murder) correlated with high religiosity:

The truth is that lower levels of religiosity correlates with lower levels of violence (interpersonal and structural). So, overall, the data is pretty clear and so are the policy implications. And I would just like to add one more thing:

Now, you will note that the arguments on masculinity, white privilege, mental illness and health care in general, inequality and gun policy are all arguments that we are told to not make because it is insensitive. Then, ask yourselves, who benefits when these issues are not discussed and problems not solved?

and as a window into how well gun control works where it is used--this is something our Australian members can tell us better than I, but this is from an article in Slate:

Quote

A decade and a half hence, the results of these policy changes are clear: They worked really, really well.

At the heart of the push was a massive buyback of more than 600,000 semi-automatic shotguns and rifles, or about one-fifth of all firearms in circulation in Australia. The country’s new gun laws prohibited private sales, required that all weapons be individually registered to their owners, and required that gun buyers present a “genuine reason” for needing each weapon at the time of the purchase. (Self-defense did not count.) In the wake of the tragedy, polls showed public support for these measures at upwards of 90 percent.

What happened next has been the subject of several academic studies. Violent crime and gun-related deaths did not come to an end in Australia, of course. But as the Washington Post’s Wonkblog pointed out in August, homicides by firearm plunged 59 percent between 1995 and 2006, with no corresponding increase in non-firearm-related homicides. The drop in suicides by gun was even steeper: 65 percent.Studies found a close correlation between the sharp declines and the gun buybacks. Robberies involving a firearm also dropped significantly. Meanwhile, home invasions did not increase, contrary to fears that firearm ownership is needed to deter such crimes. But here’s the most stunning statistic. In the decade before the Port Arthur massacre, there had been 11 mass shootings in the country. There hasn’t been a single one in Australia since.

There have been some contrarian studies about the decrease in gun violence in Australia, including a 2006 paper that argued the decline in gun-related homicides after Port Arthur was simply a continuation of trends already under way. But that paper’s methodology has been discredited, which is not surprising when you consider that its authors were affiliated with pro-gun groups. Other reports from gun advocates have similarly cherry-picked anecdotal evidence or presented outright fabrications in attempting to make the case that Australia’s more-restrictive laws didn’t work. Those are effectively refuted by findings from peer-reviewed papers, which note that the rate of decrease in gun-related deaths more than doubled following the gun buyback, and that states with the highest buyback rates showed the steepest declines. A 2011 Harvard summary of the research concluded that, at the time the laws were passed in 1996, “it would have been difficult to imagine more compelling future evidence of a beneficial effect.”

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The pedigree of honey Does not concern the bee; A clover, any time, to him Is aristocracy. ---Emily Dickinson

With some trepidation I'll add a couple of points from an aussie pacifist view. There have been two gun amnesties from memory, one occurring after the Port Arthur mass shooting. Some people jacked up about it, of course, afraid they would lose a sentimental gun, or might need it for some reason in the future. But most people seemed to be ameniable. My father handed in a gun. I don't think I'd seen it before and he certainly hadn't used it in my lifetime. The thing is, people are still allowed to own guns! There are just restrictions such as registration, keeping them in a locked gun cabinet when not in use, and a licence to make sure you know what type of animals you are allowed to shoot. Note that there are very few native animals that can legally be killed. People can still use shot guns and rifles, and there are guns here where I live. It all just takes a little time to get used to change. If you need to carry around semi automatic weapons in your city, then maybe you need some kind of counselling. Those who live by the sword die by the sword.

It will take the USA time to adjust to a new way of seeing things. It is a shame that it takes mass shootings to even start discussions. Your country has used the right to bear arms argument, but not everyone has the right to bear arms. I'm sure convicted murderers have some restrictions. And surely that right is restricted by what is a legal "arm". Not just anyone can have an atomic bomb in their pocket in case they are attacked.

Remember when you enforce your "right" to carry guns, that there are also internationally recognised human rights, too. Of course, most things come down to money. Guns are worth money. The argument is that if you close your gun factories, many people would lose their jobs. But your country like ours has no trouble closing car factories and textile factories, leaving many out of work. So perhaps the money side of it was behind the failure of the USA to sign an International Arms Treaty in July after a month of discussion. Guns and other weapons are sold to many countries where they are put to use in killing innocent villagers or put in the hands of child soldiers. They prolong unnecessary wars, and are used by military style police to kill people who may object to their suppression. They are used against dissidents to save on a fair trial. Simply, the treaty is calling on the major gun distributors, including the USA, France and Russia, to show some responsibility when selling guns. They would have to show that the guns wouldn't be used to carry out war crimes, put into the hands of child soldiers, etc. There will be some more discussions early next year, so hopefully the USA will agree to a strong treaty. The banana has been used as a symbol of the incongruency between the fact that there are many more regulations put onto the trade of bananas in the world than there are put on weapons.

Of course, the gun industry is HUGELY profitable! And mass shootings probably the most profitable yet, as people fear they will lose their guns and run out and buy even more. Or before every election.

Lone, thanks for your perspective. I'm on a soapmaking forum, and the international perspective is interesting. People from other countries are simply appalled by the gun culture in America, especially the Aussies.

It's interesting how many times attention is diverted. We talk about welfare queens, while largely ignoring corporate rape and welfare. We talk about mental health (while very important) and ignore who/what stands to lose a TON of money if Americans were to become a bit less armed.

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The pedigree of honey Does not concern the bee; A clover, any time, to him Is aristocracy. ---Emily Dickinson

Lone, people get used to what they are forced to get used to. while i respect your opinion, i hope to god it doesn't spread to this country.

there was a time when you guys had the same rebel spirit that we have had. you and we are the only two countries to actually throw off the crown successfully for working republics that gave our people freedom. now you have gone the way of the European welfare states and you passively take the dictates of your government without a whimper. you either turned in your guns/complied with your government, or you were arrested.

why does that matter if you are still "free"? because freedom is as much a state of mind as a state of being. i have seen first hand what has happened in europe, and i have watched it happen to you. i am watching it happen here. what IS happening with the violence....which BTW, is not more and by many reports less, than it has ever been, is not about guns. it is about society and it's degradation.

it is ok for you to make the choices you have had...if choices they were, but i hope we do not make the same.

and some of us are pretty much ready to take up arms if this country capitulates to the UN. that treaty is not about being responsible. it is about gun control on a global scale. do you really think the UN gives a crap about a few people dying by gun? of course not. if they did, they'd have done a better job at what was supposed to be their main reason for existing, which is to keep countries from going to war and committing genocide. they have failed miserably at the one thing they were chartered to do. so what would be our reason to believe that they care if a few people are shot?

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.....The greatest changes occur in their country without their cooperation. They are not even aware of precisely what has taken place. They suspect it; they have heard of the event by chance. More than that, they are unconcerned with the fortunes of their village, the safety of their streets, the fate of their church and its vestry. They think that such things have nothing to do with them, that they belong to a powerful stranger called “the government.” They enjoy these goods as tenants, without a sense of ownership, and never give a thought to how they might be improved.....